Paul Schlie wrote:
Re: http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2004-10/msg01263.html
http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-patches/2004-10/msg02679.html
I suspect the strongest argument in favor GCC simply utilizing plane old
ASCII typographical " and ' quote delimiter characters when possible, is
that GCC is first and foremost a development tool, generating text which
just as likely to be consumed by other tools as read my humans.
Therefore GCC should arguably adopt the conventions most friendly to that
purpose; where although it may be enabled to make its output
typographically
prettier, doing at the risk of potentially complicating it's
subsequent use
likely isn't a good decision. As opposed to a text processing tool who's
purpose is to generate ideally human friendly text, such as intended for
documentation for example.
To me, this is a very strong argument, given that the argument on the
other side is really nothing more than a relatively unimportant aesthetic
concern (and that aesthetic may well be overridden in practice by strange
results in environments that do not handle the extended character set).